Gypsy Magic (The Little Matchmakers) by Judy Griffith Gill Page B

returned as the boy struggled to lift the kettle once more.
    “I’ll take that,” Lance said, swinging it with ease from the two small hands which clutched at the handle.
    Gypsy wanted to scream. Dammit! Do I have to script every single move for this man? He hadn’t looked at Kevin’s face after he took the kettle so failed to see the resentful, then resigned expression as the child, who had manfully carried his burden this far, relinquished it with reluctance
    She waited in the dismal drizzle until Lance reappeared over the brink of the hill. She walked to meet him, her brows raised in query.
    “Found a place,” he said, without a great degree of enthusiasm. “Kevin’s picking up driftwood for your campfire, Gypsy.”
    My campfire? she asked silently following him as he slipped over the brink and reached back to give her a hand. His felt large and warm and strong around hers but she refused to let him hold it for long. Can’t he ever used the word “our”?
    But she knew, as the meal progressed, that he had been right, it was her campfire, her picnic, and neither of the other two were enjoying it one bit. Kevin sat morose and silent in a sheltered corner, nibbling at a sandwich, picking at his coleslaw and staring into the small, reluctant flames of the fire under the black bottomed kettle where the water slowly—much too slowly—heated to make the cocoa Gypsy had promised.
    Lance, she had to grant, did try for a few minutes to be pleasant to his son but it must’ve been an effort for soon he gave it up. And why not? she asked herself. How could anyone keep on trying to talk to a child who just sat with averted eyes and bit his lips, twisted his fingers together, answered in a monosyllabic manner? Gypsy, despairing, tried, too, but was forced to admit that the picnic had been a dismal failure even before it had begun.
    “Who built the cabin?” she asked, hoping to spark some interest from either of the two down-cast males in the little cave. She wrapped her arms around herself. “I’m certainly glad they did. If they’d tried to set up housekeeping in this little cave, they’d have frozen to death during the first winter storm.”
    “A settler family from Finland built it,” Lance said. “They were tough and hardy people, but even they wouldn’t have thought to live in a cave on the westward side of an island, where the prevailing winds pound in during storms.” His mouth quirked in what might have been a smile. “I don’t suppose they’d have had too many picnics, either, not even in summer.”
    Kevin slid along the driftwood log where he sat, drawing closer to Gypsy and the fire. She wrapped her arm around him. “What did the settlers do here?”
    “This particular island, because of all the open area—that big grassy field up above us, and the one at the other end, made good grazing land for sheep,” he told her. “A lot of these islands, as inhospitable as they may look on days like today, were used that way. One family, or maybe a few families together on the larger islands, tried to make a living, with the wool and the meat from the sheep. They also grew fruit and vegetables.”
    “So what happened? Where did they go?”
    “The entire operation was a failure,” he said. “They left. All but a few stalwarts. As I got it, from my friends Mary and Jim Hopkins, who sold me this island, the family who built the cabin here—”
    “You own this island?” She couldn’t bite back the startled question.
    He shot her a startled look. “Of course I do. What did you think, I was a squatter?”
    “I… hadn’t given it much thought at all. I was told the island was uninhabited and—”
    Lance reached out a hand and tilted her chin, much the way so many photographers had done, the way she’d learned to hate, to resent. Only this time, she didn’t hate it, didn’t resent it. He gazed into her eyes. “Your name suits you,” he said softly. “A wild, outgoing gypsy, overflowing with